The Song Remains the Same
by flawedesires
Summary: The people they pulled out of Tartarus aren't Percy and Annabeth anymore. They haven't been for a long time. In which the apocalypse has been averted, but the world is still ending.


**I made myself sad.**

* * *

There are good days and bad days.

On good days, she'll pick up a pen and seamlessly solve a crossword puzzle that Nico's been agonizing over for weeks—and she'll do it in less than five minutes. She'll touch some of her old books and heat up oatmeal in the microwave, her eyes following the slow rotation of the bowl with detached boredom. She'll complete the old Rubik's cube in a few flicks of her wrist and her eyes will be the same color as the sky outside. Cold and gray and empty.

On good days, he'll dust off the ballpoint pen that's been lying forlorn on the shelf by his bed. Rachel will catch a glimpse of him huddled in the bay window he likes (the one that faces the water), turning the plastic tube over and over in his hands. He'll eat the food they put in front of him. He'll ask questions—what the date is, where Grover is, why he has that long scar on his arm. They'll answer, calm and cool. _It's July 18th. Grover's at the store. You got that in a fight._ "Did I win the fight?" _'Course you did._

On good days, the four—sometimes five—of them smush together on the couch and watch movies. Rachel likes Disney movies best, while Nico and Percy can't get enough of mobster flicks (_The Godfather_ any day), and Annabeth will insist on Mel Brooks movies every time. One of them always burns the popcorn and will have to discreetly toss it in the trash—the smell of burning things don't go over well in the brownstone. But it's okay, because the boys will eat anything anyway and the hours will fly by and Annabeth smiles sometimes and that's worth it kind of.

* * *

Nico didn't think he heard correctly when Rachel offered up her house. He'd blinked at her several times and replayed the moment to be sure. "What?" he'd asked.

And she had looked at him with irritation in her eyes. "The brownstone," she repeated. "Percy won't go to Sally's. Annabeth won't go to San Fran. Montauk's six feet under. Solution? The brownstone." She'd turned away from him, zipping up the duffel that wasn't Annabeth's, but contained most of her belongings anyway. A matching one sat at her feet, bulging and prepped. "My parents bought a new place, so it's empty." She tossed the bag down with the other and began to open another. Annabeth herself was sitting on the opposite bunk, watching Rachel pack with a blank expression. She picked at her wrists absently, still raw from the restraints. She wasn't hearing a word they said.

"And," Nico said, "what was that part about me?"

Rachel stopped moving. The exhale of breath that came after wasn't quite a sigh, but it screamed pity anyway. "Grover's has a family now. He promised to swing by, but we need someone on Percy duty round the clock. You know him best." The offer she left unspoken; it hung in the air, waiting.

It wasn't so much the Percy duty as the idea of living with Rachel that made Nico hesitate. They didn't know each other too well; they were just the last ones standing in the wreckage. But Nico thought about Percy's wild eyes and Annabeth's shaking fingers and he moved in within the next heartbeat.

* * *

On bad days, she'll forget. And usually that's a good thing, because it means Rachel's gotten her to sleep for a while and she doesn't remember what happened to her or to the world or to anyone else and that's nice. But on bad days, it's a terrible thing, because on bad days she'll forget who she is and where she is, and who the strange people staring at her are. She'll scream and scream and scream when they won't let her leave. She'll put long red scratches down the length of Rachel's arms and down Nico's face and she'll kick Percy in the head hard enough to make him bleed and after she sleeps she won't remember that happened at all.

On bad days, he'll shout himself awake at 3am and huddles in the corner of his room like an animal. He won't let anyone touch him. He'll stay there, buried in the blankets he dragged off the bed, with the pen white-knuckled in his hand, cap still on. And then they have to drag Grover out of bed and talk Percy down until he sags, and then they tuck him in and wait until his breathing slows and they're exhausted.

On bad days, Nico will find Rachel crying because Percy caught her in the eye while on one of his tirades and he'll examine the bruise and make her sit in the empty bathtub with a steak pressed to her socket, like she's hiding from a green-eyed tornado. He'll let her have peace and quiet for a few hours, stand guard outside the door until the storm passes and all is quiet.

On bad days, Rachel will watch Nico leave the brownstone and not return for hours on end. She'll be there when he drags back in, slouching from the weight of the world, and she'll hand him a beer and sit with him in silence for a while.

* * *

"What happened?"

Rachel looks up, sees Annabeth lucid and alert, and sets down the spatula. "You fell asleep," she says. She checks her watch in a smooth motion. "Four hours ago." Annabeth needs reports and schedules and answers more than she needs water. She knows she forgets on some subconscious level; if she doesn't get the information she needs to stay grounded, they lose her fast. Nico and Rachel have learned to report quickly since the Incident.

Annabeth's eyes shift, flicking to the other end of the couch where the lump known as Percy is situated, curled up into a ball. He sleeps like that now, knees curled to his chest and his arms locked around his calves. Unnatural. Stiff. His eyes are fitful under their lids, and Rachel starts thinking she'll need to warm up milk for him when he jerks awake.

"No," Annabeth says. Rachel frowns. She hesitates, then continues, "I mean, what happened...to me?"

Rachel blanks. How do you answer a question like that? She thinks back to the before Annabeth, the one that rolled her eyes and knew ridiculous trivia and laughed a lot more. She compares before Annabeth to now Annabeth, who's haggard and tired and can't remember how to spell her name, and she's sad again. "You went through something very hard," she says at last. "And you're trying to put yourself together again."

Annabeth frowns. Rachel waits. The clock ticks and the burner sputters and Nico'll be at the counter the second he smells the pasta. And then Annabeth giggles, a sharp peal of laughter that is very un-Annabeth. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall," she recites gleefully.

It's moments like these that make Rachel the saddest. She forces a smile, nods. "That's right," she agrees. But there's a lump in her throat because Annabeth's trying so hard to remember how to be a person again, and it's not working.

* * *

On good days, they like to pretend. When Percy and Annabeth remember they're married and are laughing in the other room and when Nico and Rachel split a glass of wine and catch a break, they like to feign that they're roommates in college and Percy and Annabeth are that gross couple that starts talking in "we"s and are stupidly codependent. And that Rachel's majoring in art and Nico's moving up in a corporate business and they're the best of friends. And Rachel smiles and breaks out her easels and Nico lets her draw him. And Grover comes by and starts a laughing riot and they're on _Friends_ for a couple of hours.

On bad days, plates get smashed and sedation gets used and Rachel wants to throw up because she has to hold down a shrieking Percy while someone shoves a pill down his throat. On bad days, Nico gets so angry Rachel thinks he'll break his knuckles making those tight, white fists. Bad days find them sleeping in the stupid tornado shelter with their chosen weapons by the tub; Annabeth's teddy bear, that one cartoon that sucks the violence out of them like magic, the scarf that smells like Sally Jackson, a tin of blue cupcakes, and a few choice bottles of Scotch or really anything that'll get them wasted. And they'll make bitter jokes about how they're parents now even if they're shitty ones and they might as well get married since they have kids to take care of now, but neither of them laughs.

And sometimes, no matter what kind of day it is, Rachel will cry because Percy asked her who the pretty blonde girl was again and this wasn't supposed to happen and how fucking ironic it is. And Nico holds her hand and thinks just how funny it is that they survived everything—everyfuckingthing—else in the world, only to be beaten down by this.

* * *

**I've made a huge mistake by writing this.**


End file.
